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Friday, November 5, 2010

Honduras: Truth commission continues investigating

This week a Honduran truth commission heard testimony on the aftermath of the June 2009 ouster of former president Manuel Zelaya.

The panel, which started its work last May, has focused is work on allegations of human rights violations during the de facto rule of Roberto Micheletti and current president Porfirio Lobo. Board member Eduardo Stein told the local press that the commission may call on Micheletti and Zelaya to testify this month in order to discuss “the political decisions taken in the days an hours” after Zelaya was ousted.

Last month the commission has heard complaints from several mayors who accused Lobo of withholding constitutionally mandated funds. On Wednesday the panel heard from Honduran journalists who claimed that their rights where “violated” by the government and security forces.

The mountain of information received by the commission will be examined and presented in a report next year. Commission president Elsie Monge of Ecuador told the press that the board’s work is valuable and necessary:

“The work we must do as a Truth Commission is fundamentally to investigate, clear up the truth over what happened and reconstruct history. For without recognizing the past one cannot at in the present, much less construct a future.”

While the board’s results remain to be seen, Honduran officials denied that there was a state policy designed to violate human rights. In testimony to the U.N. Human Rights Council this week, Vice President María Antonieta Bográn admitted that Honduras suffered from high levels of violence but blamed it on “organized crime.”

The White House has been reluctant to condemn Honduras for any human rights violations and State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley admitted last month that the U.S. would like to see Honduras reintegrated into the Organization of American States. That news may not sit well with Honduran human rights activist Bertha Oliva who said to IPS that here have been over 1000 violations since Lobo assumed the presidency in January.Image- EPA (Current Honduran president Porfirio Lobo).Online Sources- laTribuna.hn, EPA, ElHeraldo.hn, UPI, IPS, Adital, Radio Netherlands Worldwide